Wanderlust
by wonderstance
Summary: After the Demon World Tournament ended, Kurama decided Yoko would have to perish. "You had this look on your face like you wanted to kill yourself," a young girl would tell him later on. She had no idea how close she was hitting home. Kurama, OC.


Although Kurama was more inclined to remain inside the science lab after school, he decided to head to the park near his house to catch some sunlight on this devastatingly beautiful day.

He sat on a bench near the entrance of the park and cloaked his pink school uniform over his shoulders, revealing a white undershirt underneath. A slew of women passed by, throwing him glances over their backs. By now, he was used to it. In some regards, he was pretty decent looking. And from a distance away, he could be haphazardly mistaken for a woman with his long red mane, but upon closer inspection, it was obvious from the handsome features that he was a man.

Yomi had given him some time to stay in the Human World so that he could carry on with some unfinished business. Kurama had promised to bring him some fighters for the upcoming Demon World tournament that Yusuke had proposed. He already gathered up Tōya, Jin, Chu, Rinku, Shishi and (the beautiful) Suzuka, and they were currently training under Genkai's iron fist. The hard part was already done. Now, he had some time to think on his own accord.

After this coming tournament ended, Kurama decided that Yoko would have to perish.

No longer could he hide under the guise of his old nature. It was time for him to adjust to the change completely. He realized only recently that he no longer reacted quickly enough to his human name, Shuichi. Despite growing up under it, he'd been living with the name Yoko for thousands of years longer, so it had staked its claim somewhere deep within him. It would be a name difficult to shake, and it would take him some time to completely bury the demons of his past, but Kurama didn't think it would be completely impossible. Besides, if he wanted to carry on living in the Human World peacefully, then he wouldn't have much of a choice.

Yoko would have to die.

When this conclusion settled definitively in his mind, Kurama leaned into the back of the bench, closing his eyes and lifting his chin up at the sky, trying to catch the sun. His brows creased and he clenched his fists tightly while the shade of the clouds shadowed over. There were times where he wished that things could've been different, but for the sake of his life in the Human World, he would no longer resort to Yoko. And when he understood the finality of this truth, he opened his eyes and stared at his lap with a sad smile on his face.

"Hey."

He looked up.

A girl no more than seventeen stood in front of him, lifting a small brown paper bag in his direction. From what he could tell with the white button up blouse and the green plaid skirt, she was probably a student.

But she had this look in her garnet eyes that was far too old for her age—this perpetual look of exhaustion. It was as if she'd seen many things in her lifetime already; and Kurama regarded this look as not quite the look of a cynic. Rather, it was the look of someone who had been running in circles for a long time.

Kurama shifted his gaze to the brown paper bag she was gesturing towards his face. It smelled sweet, probably something from the pastry shop nearby.

When he took too long to respond, she placed the bag promptly on his lap and said, "Just take it. I think you need it more than I do."

He looked perplexed, balancing the bag with his hands before it toppled over, "I…what is it?"

"Just some egg tarts," she told him, "I got them for myself but I'm not really hungry right now."

He stared at the bag with a blank look on his face, considering the circumstances carefully. Kurama was a little hungry but he was more so confused by her random act of generosity. If thousands of years living in the Demon World taught him anything, it was that the small unobtrusive situations were usually the most dangerous. Although this girl seemed harmless enough, with no spiritual read or killer's intent apparent to the naked eye, Kurama couldn't help but wonder about her underlying motives.

After all, he already caught one parasite inside his younger stepbrother sent by Yomi's right hand man, Shachi. He wasn't about to place his trust in the hands of a random stranger, even if she did have a human signature. It was a force of habit, he supposed, raising his guard slightly. He regarded the bag of pastries with half-lidded eyes, skepticism written all over the fine features of his pretty face.

"It's not poisoned or anything," she said as-a-matter-of-factly. With that, she dug her hand into the bag and took out an egg tart and bit off half—chewing with her mouth open, "See?"

Kurama arched a brow in slight confusion. So she might've been just performing this as a gesture of good faith. He lowered his guard slightly when he watched her swallow the rest of the egg tart.

"Why are you giving this to me?" He asked.

She let his words weigh on her mind for a moment, as if she were in deep thought and contemplation, before she smiled softly and replied, "You just look really sad. It makes me feel a little sorry for you."

Kurama blinked. The last thing he expected was pity.

"You had this look on your face," she continued, brushing the crumbs off her fingertips, "like you wanted to kill yourself."

She was hitting so close to home.

"That's awfully presumptive of you," he replied; and he wasn't quite sure why he decided to continue, "wait—what kind of look do you mean?"

Pastry girl smiled sadly and crossed her arms over her chest while taking a quick glance up at the clear blue sky, "I don't really know how to explain it. It's just that—my brother had that same look on his face before he killed himself."

Kurama let this bit settle for a moment while he stared at the crumpled brown paper bag of pastries sitting in his lap. He glanced back up at the girl with her short, orange hair blowing wildly in the wind—and stared a little longer, trying to digest the look in her eye as if she was watching something dark and broken shatter inside of her.

"Well, it's your choice," she chirped, flashing him a small smile, "but they're really good, so I really hope you take a bite."

With that, she headed down the pathway.

* * *

A couple hours passed by and the sky hit dusk in blushes of pink. Kurama hadn't moved at all, except to eat the pastries given to him earlier in the dark. The brown paper bag was folded into a neat square, sitting next to him on the bench.

By now, the park was cleared of people. The fountain had turned off and silence consumed the enclosed area, save for a car horn here and there.

"You're still here?"

He tried to ignore the fact that he hadn't even sensed her within his general vicinity. But he was pretty wrapped up in his own thoughts so he attributed it to his lack of attention. This kind of behavior would get him killed in the Demon World.

"Do you mind?" She gestured to the empty seat next to him where the paper bag was; she tugged on the single strap of her cross-body satchel, "I just got off a long shift."

Kurama shifted over, "Not at all."

Pastry girl took a seat, taking the paper bag and putting it in her lap, crossing one leg over the other. She looked like she wanted to say something to him, but instead, she kept her mouth shut and leaned back into the seat of the bench. Her satchel bag sat on the floor and she stared idly up at the sky. She looked tired, the way Kurama's mother would look after she had a long day from work.

"I see you haven't killed yourself," she finally said, breaking the silence.

He considered this for a moment, "I suppose I haven't."

She glanced at him quickly before averting her gaze to the sky.

It was difficult for Kurama to grasp the concept of abandoning Yoko completely. After all, his soul had melded deeply with Shuichi, so they were one already, synchronized at the very base. He couldn't kill Yoko if he wanted to, at least not right now. The most he could do for the time being would be to ignore him, to bury him somewhere deep inside the chasm within himself. Kurama knew, at some level, it was foolish to deny his true self, but that didn't mean he couldn't at least try. If he wanted a simple human life, then he would have to release his demon past. He had far too many scars inside himself.

It seemed counterintuitive at best. Kurama had been thinking about this all day and came to the same conclusion every time. It would never work. But he couldn't masquerade as Shuichi forever. He had to _become_ Shuichi. He _was_ Shuichi. If he compromised his human life for Yoko, then he would inevitably lose himself forever. Kurama wasn't one for hyperbole and exaggeration but he had to admit that the separation of his psyche was emotionally, as well as physically taxing. At some point, he had to lose one of his identities.

It would be the best for him in the grand scheme of things.

"I'm glad," she told him, kicking her legs like a five-year old, "but you still have that look on your face. So I hope you're not lying to me."

Kurama forced a smile for the sake of being polite, "I assure you I have no intentions to kill myself, if that's what you think."

Pastry girl looked at him some more while she ceased kicking her legs, "For some reason, and I can't put my finger on it…but I don't believe you. I hope you're telling the truth though." She looked like she was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Please don't mind me," he told her, "I just have a lot on my mind."

She quirked a brow, "Like what?"

"It's nothing that would interest you," he said, "I promise."

She seemed to get the hint because she dropped the questioning almost immediately. Kurama hoped she wouldn't take his offhandedness too personally. After all, he was a private person. Even among his peers like Yusuke and Kuwabara, there were things that he kept secret, deep within the depths of his own despair. If there were somebody who even came close to understanding him truly, it would be Hiei. But even he couldn't accept the disparity between Kurama and Shuichi. For Hiei, Kurama would always be Kurama. Demons never tried too hard to dig beneath the surface of a façade.

"So did you like the pastries?" She asked, "I'm guessing you did—since you finished them all."

He blinked out of his thoughts, "Oh. Yes. They were delicious. Thank you."

A smile formed on her lips, "Happy to hear that. To be honest, I was pretty worried—I thought about you all day. I hope that doesn't come off too creepy."

He tried to hide the look of mild astonishment on his face, "Such compassion for a stranger you hardly know?"

Pastry girl paused, letting the half-question half-statement process a moment before she decided to tell him, "Apathy is my least favorite trait. I think it's important to be compassionate and kind to others. I don't know. I just don't feel right if I know I can do something, and not do anything at all. Bystander effect isn't my forte, I suppose."

Kurama closed his eyes, "That's noble of you."

The slight hint of sarcasm was undeniable in his tone of voice. Living in the Makai had taught him the impossibility of living under such an ideal, unless it was merely a pretense for something much darker. Demons who masqueraded as kind and virtuous were usually the same demons that would stab him in the back once he decided to turn around.

"You don't have to agree with me," she said, catching on to his tone of voice, "but that's just how I feel. I'm sorry if you think it's stupid."

"It's not stupid," Kurama told her. Truthfully, he admired her way of thinking. It _was_ noble. He could only wish to be as idealistic as she was being.

She stared at him for a moment, looking only slightly perplexed. But this faded into a small smile as she stood up from the bench, stretching her arms high into the air, soaking up the last bits of sun hiding in the pinks of the sky, "What's your name?" She asked, "Feels a bit silly that we've talked this much without actually knowing each other."

"It's Kurama," he decided to be honest for once because she didn't seem like the kind of girl who would sign on to his newly formed identity _Shuichi_. As much as he didn't want to admit it, she had a knack for being rather intuitive—and right now, he was far too jaded and bitter to even bother lying to her.

"My name is Youko," she told him, "as you can see, my parents are pretty old-fashioned."

He blinked, unable to hide the blatant shock on his face. He sort of half-laughed from the sheer absurdity of it all, while nodding in her general direction as a sign of understanding, "I'm sure you gave them hell for that."

Youko smiled halfheartedly, "I have to get going. It's getting late. But I'm glad I got to see you."

"Your brother—" Kurama wasn't sure where he was going with this but it seemed to catch her attention, "—I'm sorry."

She arched a brow, "I don't need the pity, but thank you," and with a small smile, "and do me a favor? Worry more about yourself."


End file.
